Carl Welser: Life at the Kiwanis Corner

Livingston County, MI, Daily Press & Argus
http://www.livingstondaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080707/OPINION01/807070302/1014/OPINION

The guidelines for making a difference are straightforward. You spot a need. You assemble whatever tools and resources might come in handy. Then you ignite some action.

As the dust clears, you inspect the difference, hoping it’s all to the good. And then you move on to another need.

Down in Hamburg Township, our Kiwanis club—like Rotary, Lions, Optimists, and every other service club—is dedicated to making a positive difference in our community. Being “a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time,” we focus particularly on the needs of children.

Whether working for children or adults, the real trick lies in getting people involved in making a desirable difference.

This year, like every other year for more years than we can accurately remember, some school kids planted flowers at the Kiwanis Corner. They learned an important lesson. In doing so, they made a little difference, which will last all summer in the eyes of folks driving into the Hamburg area.

There’s more to this story than meets the eye.

The so-called Kiwanis Corner is about 25 years old—no one remembers for sure. It came to pass because a lot of different people were interested in making a difference.

Well over a century ago, a triangular wedge of land got stuck between the curve of M-36 and the junctions with Hamburg Road. The wedge technically belongs to the state. For decades, it grew up in weeds and accidental trees. Anonymous folks made regular deposits in a trash dump along the north edge.

Someone from the Kiwanis club decided to make a difference. They cleaned up the corner, filled in the trash dump, mowed the weeds, planted grass, and installed a landscaped sign welcoming folks to Hamburg.

The Toth Brothers salvaged some heavy timbers from a local barn reportedly built around the time Hamburg first declared itself a place in the early 1800s. They used the red oak timbers to build the welcoming sign. The Toth Brothers made a difference.

During their annual cleanup of the corner this spring, Kiwanis members pruned a lot of overgrown shrubbery and prepared the flowerbed for planting. They made a difference in one evening.

Toot Golden showed up with his pickup truck to haul all the trimmings away. He also donates the red chips used to mulch the garden. Toot makes a difference.

Tom Carr’s fourth-graders from Hamburg Elementary School chugged up in a school bus one morning in early June and planted two flats of petunias gotten at cost from Powers Flowers. The fourth-graders made a difference.

For several years, Leo’s Sprinkler Service has voluntarily maintained the sprinkler system. Leo makes a difference.

Oops! No water this year. The well went dry.

Jim Cox, grounds manager for Hamburg Township, took an interest in the stubborn well. Ryan Adams of Adams Well Drilling happened to be in town that day. Jim led him over to take a look at the well. Jim made a difference.

Ryan quickly diagnosed a dead pump. With his professional skills, Ryan made a difference. Ryan spoke with his mother, Karen Adams, back at the office. Karen volunteered the gift of a used pump. Karen made a difference.

It would cost $285 to install the pump. Kelly Denha, whose company is developing the corner known as The Village at Hamburg across the road from the Kiwanis Corner, got wind of the need and wrote a check. Kelly made a difference.

For many years, Jerry Barnett’s landscaping crew has voluntarily mowed the grass. Jerry makes a difference.

That’s just one example of people making a difference in a true community.

The Kiwanis Corner made a difference 25 years ago when people volunteered to salvage a neglected corner, cleaned up a casual landfill, and landscaped a neglected wedge of land.

Kiwanis tackles about 28 different projects in a year’s time. It’s all done for kids in and around the community, including the gift of hundreds of dictionaries to every third-grader in the local school district and four $1,000 scholarships to graduating seniors from Pinckney Community High School.

Funding better than two dozen service projects annually costs major bucks. I won’t bother listing the entire catalog of projects here. Suffice it to say they are all worthy of our time and effort. They all make a difference.

Hamburg is no longer the mom-and-pop community it was a generation ago. That’s why it’s more important than ever to seek out community-minded folks who are willing to make a difference.

The bucks needed to handle all these projects come from an annual golf outing. Several major donors have already set things on the road to success again this year.

The theme for this year’s golf outing is “VOTE—for kids 2008.” It is, after all, an election year.
If you haven’t participated in your full quota of golf outings yet this summer, you’d surely be welcome to join the Kiwanis Club of Hamburg at Whispering Pines Golf Club on July 25.

It’s guaranteed that your participation will make a difference in more ways than you might have imagined.

Someone reading about the Kiwanis Corner will surely wonder about another large sign on an adjacent corner. The other sign proclaims Hamburg to be “The Kohlrabi Capital of the World.”

I could share with you the little bit I know about that other sign. But I can safely say—and swear to it—that I have no idea who erected that other sign. It simply appeared there one day about 25 years ago. Honestly!

Carl Welser is a minister, a former firefighter with the Hamburg Fire Department, and a regular columnist in the Daily Press & Argus. You can send e-mail to him at cwelser@sbcglobal.net.